Things I will eyeroll if you put it in your fic

[transemacabre]

1. Fishing-for-compliments. "Omigod, this fanfic is so bad, I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be posting this!" If you say something like that about your own work, you know what? I'm gonna believe you. Yeah, your fanfic probably sucks and you should probably have kept it to yourself.

2. M/M sex scenes where one half of the slash pairing thinks to himself how, at last, he can be as rough as he wants to be because his sex partner is a big tough man and not some fragile woman. Um, have you ever had sex with a woman? Women are not china dolls. If you fuck a woman vigorously, her leg will not pop off or something. And a penis isn't a battering ram, for fuck's sake.

3. "Blown pupils". Has any turn of phrase ever metatastized across fandom so quickly and so widely?

Comments

[carolinelamb.livejournal.com]

Oh true, blown pupils! I've read them! And I'm sure I've committed enough "dilated pupils" et al for a life time to not be allowed to laugh! But still ... I thought the same thing recently when I had a fanfic reading day and read that in almost EVERY fic, I had bookmarked. Interestingly across all qualities, from barely legible bad fic to eloquent, sharp master piece. Blown pupils wherever one looked ... :D

When did this madness even start?

Re: Bad fic: Cringes (a little ;) I did post fics where I did mention the badfic!quality as a sort of warning and in a "sorry (but not really)" way. I always feel it's better to over-warn than to under-warn!

If you fuck a woman vigorously, her leg will not pop off or something.

Hahaha! <3!

[transemacabre.livejournal.com]

For me, I think I started noticing the "blown pupils" thing sometime after the summer of 2010; it was after I wrote my Hetalia fic, 'Love Is A Higher Law', in which I described basically the same thing but at the time there wasn't a stock phrase to get it across, so I wrote "That," America stared up at him with eyes so dilated they were almost black, barely ringed with blue, "was amazing."

I feel like a while after that, I started seeing "blown pupils" hither and yon, and realized it was supposed to mean the same thing I had tried to describe earlier.

[carolinelamb.livejournal.com]

In later years it may be possible to determine fan fiction periods not only by tropes but also by the appearance/usage of certain phrases. It probably is already.

*takes note to avoid writing "blown pupil"* :D

[redcandle17.livejournal.com]

"Blown pupils"

What does that even mean?!

[transemacabre.livejournal.com]

Its supposed to mean that your pupils become wide and make your eye almost black; it's based on (real anthropological) studies that show that when we look at someone we find attractive, our pupils dilate. So it's sort of textual shorthand to get across one character's attraction to another.

It'd be fine if it was just something that cropped up now and then, but it's FUCKING EVERYWHERE. Every fandom I'm in, from Marvel to Les Miz, blown pupils are popping everywhere.

[redcandle17.livejournal.com]

But how did they start using "blown pupils" to mean "dilated pupils"? It seems like such an odd word choice to me.

[transemacabre.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. Blown pupils is a thing, but not a sexy thing -- it usually refers to the way pupils look after someone suffers head trauma. I did a google search for "blown pupils fanfic" and got over 8,000 hits.

[mrasaki.livejournal.com]

Personally, I hate "this is probably OOC!" and "un-betaed, so forgive any mistakes!" which just tells me the person is 1. aware that their fic is OOC and can't be assed to fix it, and 2. too lazy to proof it themselves.